| Information Block (IB) | DRAFT 1 | DRAFT 2 | PUBLISHED | Moves & Steps |
| 1 | Soil erosion is a major worldwide environmental problem (Borrelli …), which mainly occurs on tilled sloping land, and causes serious ecological deterioration in highly susceptible regions such as the Chinese Loess Plateau. | Slopping farming land accounts for nearly two third of the total land of the Loess Plateau in China, and the average annual erosive modulus is as high as 25,000 t∙km−2∙a−1. | Slopping farming land accounts for nearly two-third of the total land of the Loess Plateau in China, and the average annual erosive modulus is as high as 25,000 t∙km−2∙a−1. | Move 1: establishing a territory Step 1: Claim to centrality |
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| This situation makes the Loess Plateau a major source of water and soil losses, and slope plays a key role in the evolution of eroded microrelief in this loessial region. | This situation makes the Loess Plateau a major source of soil losses, and slope plays a key role in the evolution of eroded soil surface in this loessial region. | Move 1: establishing a territory Step 2: Making topic generalizations |
| 3 | Compared with the geomorphology, microtopography means the undulating surface configuration with fewer changes in relative elevation (usually no more than 5 - 25 cm) over a relatively small area under the combined effects of surface covers, rainfall, and tillage treatment. | The microtopographic surfaces are created by using farm tillage tools to form undulating terrains which comprise … When force of rainfall and runoff causes soil detachment and sediment transport, and creates depressions to store water, the surface microroughness changes occur, which have impact on the evolution of soil erosion, so to throw light on the dynamics of surface microtopography is critically important to understanding erosion. |
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| 4 | During the erosion process, the elevation of the microtopographic surface varies, and the surface roughness changes, which will affect the hydrological processes temporally and spatially (such as splash erosion, sheet erosion, and gully erosion). | Slope is one of the major factors for modeling soil erosion. Continual scientific efforts have been made to investigate the relationship between slope and erosion, which have been represented by many soil erosion models from the early Zingg from 1940’s, to later Smith, Whitt, Musgrave, USLE and WEPP. Some consensus has been arrived at that slope is an important factor influencing runoff, has a correlation with erosion rate and runoff rate, influences the duration of time for each stage of erosion, and governs soil erosion Kinnell & Cummings, …; and runoff and erosion tend to increase when a rainfall event occurs on a steeper surface at a critical slope ranging between 5˚ and 25˚. | In order to illustrate the erosion processes, continual scientific efforts have been made to investigate the relationship between slope and erosion, which have been represented by many soil erosion models from the early Zingg from 1940’s, to later Smith, Whitt, Musgrave, USLE and WEPP. Some consensus has been arrived at that the slope is an important factor influencing runoff, has a correlation with erosion rate and runoff rate, influences the duration of time for each stage of erosion, and governs soil erosion; and runoff and erosion tend to increase when a rainfall event occurs on a steeper surface at a critical slope ranging between 5˚ and 25˚ | Move 1: establishing a territory Step 3 Reviewing items of previous research |
| 5 | Sheet erosion is the initial stage occurring in runoff erosion, and it is also the initial form of erosive surface alteration. In the sheet erosion stage, the top layer of surface soil is uniformly removed by the forces of raindrops and overland flows. And the effect of water droplets striking the soil surface can increase the sheet flow turbulence, thereby increasing the sediment transport capacity and the severity of erosion. Therefore, the relative elevation of each soil surface point varies, and the soil surface may be dotted with many small puddles. Spatial distribution of soil surface points is important for understanding the overland flow generation and the surface runoff. Also, different tillage methods and slope gradients can influence the spatial distribution of runoff and the susceptibility of surface soil to erosion. How to quantify the processes through the change of surface roughness will has important practical significance for understanding of the relationship between microtopography and erosion, and weighing tillage practice options. | Besides, there is a general consensus that contour tillage, as an agricultural farming practice widely used in Chinese Loess Plateau, has favorable soil and water conserving effect. However, the optimal critical slope for appropriate tillage remains unidentified. | Besides, there is a general consensus that contour tillage (CT), as an agricultural farming practice widely used in the Chinese Loess Plateau, has favorable soil and water conserving effect. However, the optimal critical slope for appropriate tillage remains unidentified. | Move 1: establishing a territory Step 3 Reviewing items of previous research Move 2: establishing a niche Step 1: Indicating a gap |
| 6 | The term “spatial heterogeneity” or “spatial variability” was widely used to present uneven spatial distribution of the relative elevation of each soil surface point, based on DEM or M-DEM datasets systematically studied the spatial heterogeneity and spatiotemporal variability of the microtopographic surfaces through all the erosion stages from splash erosion to rill erosion stage, and they found that the surface relative elevation during the evolution is closely related to rainfall intensity, slope gradient and tillage practices. Especially, rainfall has a smoothing (moderating) or enhancing effect on microtopography, and the spatial change of microtopography caused by rainfall is also different from by slope steepness. Since the data used in previous studies was either before rainfall events or after rainfall events, there was little research concerning the differences between the initial surface and the surfaces resulting from application of rainfall and slope treatments. And for specific erosion stages, the effects of rain intensity and slope are still not well illustrated. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out a research quantifying the change of surface roughness in sheet erosion. It is also useful for us to improve agricultural management and practices. |
| The microtopographic surfaces are created by using farm tillage tools to form undulating terrains which comprise a mixture of soil grains, aggregates and clods, and whose height variance is rather small. When the force of rainfall and runoff causes soil detachment and sediment transport, and creates depressions to store water, the surface roughness changes occur, which have an impact on the evolution of soil erosion, so to throw light on the dynamics of surface microtopography is critically important to understanding erosion. | Move 1: establishing a territory Step 2: Making topic generalizations Move 2: establishing a niche Step 1 Adding to what is known Step 2 Presenting positive justification |
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| The evolution of erosion is a complicated multi-scale profile changing process. The soil erosion patterns show irregularities when they are observed on different scales. For example, DEMs are nowadays used to produce basic data for soil erosion study, and fractal and anisotropic properties could be more prominent and distinct with a higher grid resolution used. Therefore, the findings and conclusions made based on a macro scale don’t apply to solve issues relevant here on a micro scale. And the previous study area was often set on the scale of a watershed and mainly focus on the stage of interrill erosion, but few related studies were carried out on the microtopographic scale. | The evolution of erosion is a complicated multi-scale profile changing process. The soil erosion patterns show irregularities when they are observed on different scales. For example, DEMs are nowadays used to produce basic data for the soil erosion study, and fractal and anisotropic properties could be more prominent and distinct with a higher grid resolution used. Therefore, the findings and conclusions made based on a macro scale don’t apply to solve issues relevanthere on a micro scale. And the previous study area was often set on the scale of the watershed and mainly focused on the stage of interrill erosion, but few related studies were carried out on the microtopographic scale, i.e. at an area-limited slope with millimeter resolution DEM data. | Move 2: establishing a niche Step 1b Adding to what is known Step 1a: Indicating a gap |
| 8 | So, the aim of this paper is to characterize the change of surface roughness of microtopographic sloping land in the process of sheet erosion, which is affected by factors of rainfall, slope and tillage. | This work approached only one factor i.e. slope and we anticipate more factors and indice will be covered in our future research. The purpose of this effort is to shed light into the microroughness and hydrological responses during the evolution of erosion, so as to generate soil erosion models on the microtopographic scale and examine the critical slope value, which will be instrumental in land protection, soil erosion prediction and land suitability classification. | This work approaches only one factor, i.e. slope gradient and we anticipate more factors and indices will be covered in our future research. The purpose of this effort is to shed light into the microroughness and hydrological responses during the evolution of erosion, so as to generate soil erosion models on the microtopographic scale and examine the critical slope value, which will be instrumental in land protection, soil erosion prediction and land suitability classification. | Move 3 Presenting the present work Step 1 Announcing present research descriptively and/or purposively Step 6 Stating the value of the present research |